Death Imitates Art

Aretha Franklin’s body currently rests at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit after her death earlier this month. Her body, resting velvet inside a 24k gold-plated coffin, was transported in a white LaSalle sedan to the museum where she will be on display for three days for mourners to file past and pay their respects. Today she was dressed completely in crimson, with rumours she will wear a different outfit for each viewing day.

Those in line waited for over three hours for the chance to file past Franklin, with people pushing against one another to take photos of her golden casket as it was brought inside. However once inside, mourners were told to put their phones away – to take a photo of her body would somehow lack respect, although images can be found in almost any article about the viewing.
Let me unpack this in a few points:

1. Anyone is allowed to see her in person, however those who could not make it to the viewing are not able to see the entirety of her body, as the general public are not permitted to have their phones or cameras with them
2. An image of her resting in her casket has been shared by most media outlets, however the angle does not allow readers to see her from the shoulders up

From this, we can presume that in-person viewing is deemed respectful and acceptable in American society, but that photographs or videos of a body are somehow irreverent. So why, then, were photos and videos taken over the shoulder of Franklin, looking down over her hair to show her outfit and folded ankles? And is it okay to have images and videos of the deceased online for viewing, or should this be kept to a strictly in-person experience?

WWJ Newsradio 950 morning anchor Roberta Jasina asked on Facebook if press photos and video of Franklin in her casket were disrespectful, and what mourners think Franklin would have wanted. Responses varied, with some saying they thought the decision was disgusting, others questioning if perhaps Franklin had requested it, and still others saying that she “belonged to the world” and thus the decision was the correct one. Others had the same question I did: “Why is it OK to view her in her casket at the service but not OK to view it in a picture?”

Aretha Franklin is surrounded by roses, in a gold-plated coffin. Dozens of pink Cadillacs will be driving past the museum tomorrow in her memory. Hundreds have lined up to view her corpse. She has been embalmed specifically to be viewed by people. She’s even being given outfit changes, as though she is performing in a stage show. How, then, is it disrespectful to take her photo so others can view her body, when this is the express purpose of having it displayed? Why is it, to quote another response on Roberta Jasina’s facebook post, “…disgusting! Not to mention NO Respect”?

At one point in time, preserving the body for continued viewing was the ultimate: Lenin’s body takes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to be maintained in its current state, and even has its own dedicated preservation institute: the Center for Scientic Research and Teaching Methods in Biochemical Technologies (aka the Lenin Lab). And he’s not the only famously preserved corpse; the same institute also preserved Ho Chi Minh, Kim il-Sung and Kim Jong-il for long-term viewing. To view the body, how well preserved it was and to see the extravagance of the casket, the flowers and the setting, showed power, influence and public grief. These weren’t exactly times where the public would be bringing their own cameras, however images of the deceased were still easily found in the early 19th century. Post-mortem photography was gradually dying out at this point, with cameras becoming cheaper and more easily used by regular folk, thus making the need to capture a final image of a loved one a little less meaningful, since you were more likely to have plenty of photos of them looking a little more lively. So perhaps this, then, explains something of the current conundrum surrounding Franklin’s body: we have plenty of images, recordings and videos of her while alive, so we no longer need to remember her only by what she looks like in death. This, to me at least, makes a public viewing of her body seem just as outlandish as the idea of keeping a photo of her body despite having many hundreds of photos available of her while she was alive. However, viewing a body is common in the US and many mourners may have felt that a part of their mourning process was missing if they didn’t have the chance to physically view her.

This type of debate will only continue to grow as technology continues to offer alternatives to tradition. Instead of looking on technology as something that is being used in a disrespectful way, we could instead choose to see it as a tool to help us more as a community in grief, as people separated by time and distance and as a society that is looking both to the future for solutions, and to the past for inspiration. Currently, a variety of funeral services are available online. You can, with a few clicks, pre-plan your funeral, stream your service online, even pay your respects to a virtual grave. A cemetery in Slovenia is offering digital headstones, that show slideshows of images and information about the deceased. Traditions and technology are colliding, and while some are able to embrace this, others seem to be taking some time to catch up.